Oklahoma baseball entered the Round Rock Classic this weekend playing mostly uneven baseball after splitting the first four games of the young season. Although, their best outing of the year came in the last game they played with Wednesday’s 7-1 defeat of UT-Arlington.
On Friday, while it didn’t always look great, they managed to keep the good times rolling with a stunning come-from-behind win over No. 21/22 Auburn in 10 innings to move above .500 at 3-2. The loss is the Tigers’ first of the year.
The Sooners turned to their best starter in Wyatt Olds to try and slow down an Auburn offense that hung 33 runs on the board in their last game earlier this week. Unfortunately for Skip Johnson and company, he wasn’t at his best. He was only able to go three innings allowing three runs on seven hits and leaving the game with Oklahoma trailing 3-0.
It was at this point that we insert one of the stars of the game in relief pitcher Jaret Godman into the equation. Godman picked up his teammate, and then some, tossing an astonishing six shutout frames out of the bullpen allowing just four hits. Unequivocally he kept them in it and gave them the chance to win it late.
First baseman Tyler Hardman picked up a run-scoring single in the fifth to get the Sooners on the board, but that was it until the eighth inning. Leftfielder Diego Muniz would get an RBI single at that point to make it a 3-2 lead going into the ninth.
There, Hardman would come through yet again with a sacrifice fly with runners on the corners and one out to even things up at 3-3. Oklahoma would load the bases with two outs, but Kendall Pettis struck out and left the runners stranded.
In the tenth, closer Jason Ruffcorn came in and absolutely dominated, putting the side down in order with two strikeouts. The Sooners would then load the bases up with two outs again, but this time Hardman would be the man at the plate and he would yet again come through with the walk-off single to complete the rally for the win.
This is an absolutely superb win for Oklahoma to get back in the win column against a really good Auburn team. The confidence that could be drawn from this will be huge and it will be very interesting to see if this is the spark of a really nice stretch for the Sooners against quality competition over the next couple of weekends.
They’ll run things back at Dell Diamond tomorrow against Texas A&M at 6:00 p.m. CT.
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